BOTH Royal Bank of Scotland and Natwest reported outages on their online services earlier this morning.

Reports rose sharply for both services from just before 9am, according to the DownDetector website, but they are now both "working as normal", according to a tweet from Natwest's Twitter account.

Issues had arisen in attempts to use the apps for both services, with users unable to transfer money.

On the Natwest app, many were getting an error message, despite restarting the app on a few occasions.

Both services work on the same system, which is why both banks went down.

How did RBS and Natwest initially respond to the issue?

In response to one customer, RBS wrote: "This is a recent incident that has just occurred, rest assured we will get the issue resolved ASAP so please try again in a little while or use our telephony service to make transfers/payments. We greatly appreciate your patience with us, many thanks!"

Whilst responding to customers who had faced issues on Natwest, the Natwest Help Twitter account wrote: "We are working as quickly as we can to respond to all customers regarding this incident. I am sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. You can use our telephony [sic] service or e-banking in the mean time to manage your accounts. Thank you for your patience again."